No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam

by Reza Aslan

Muhammad’s time, the life of a free man was worth about one hundred camels; the life of a free woman, fifty.

“men are to take care of women, because God has given them greater strength, and because men use their wealth to provide for them” (4:34).

is a tragedy that after fourteen hundred years, this simple compromise has yet to overcome the sometimes petty yet often binding ideological differences between the three faiths of Abraham.

Ali’s proponents would not be silenced; so it was left to Umar to silence them himself. Having literally beaten the leader of the Ansar, Sa‘d ibn Ubayda, into submission, Umar went to the house of Fatima, Ali’s wife and Muhammad’s daughter, and threatened to burn it down unless

The Riddah Wars represented Abu Bakr’s conscious effort to maintain the unity of the Arabs under

the Riddah Wars did have the regrettable consequence of permanently associating apostasy (denying one’s faith) with treason (denying the central authority of the Caliph).

decided to round up the variant collections of the Quran, bring them to Medina, and set fire to them.

himself; but this charge is totally unfounded. There may have been some hostility between the two men, and Ali may not have surrendered his aspirations for the Caliphate. But the fact is that Ali

CALIPH’S MURDER at the hands of fellow Muslims threw the Ummah into a state of pandemonium. With the rebels still in control of Medina, it was unclear

It was

contingent of Meccans and, riding atop a camel, personally led them into battle against Ali’s forces in Medina.

The B...

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Kharijites, this faction has already been cited for their justification of Uthman’s murder on the grounds that he had broken the commands of God and rejected the example of the Prophet, making him no longer worthy of the Caliphate. Because the Kharijites stressed the need for a religious authority as Caliph, they are often credited with being the first Muslim theocrats.

Shi‘atu Ali, the Shi‘atu Uthman, the Shi‘atu Mu‘awiyah, and the Kharijites were above all

Therefore, after his forces quickly overwhelmed Aisha’s army at the Battle of the Camel—during

appealed to the old tribal sentiments of his Qurayshi kinsmen in order to raise an army against Ali in retribution for Uthman’s murder.

Kharijites who had seceded from his party. No sooner had he subdued the Kharijites (in what was less a battle than a massacre)

Ali, the Shi‘ah claim, was the first Imam:

Nor is it surprising that three of the first four leaders of Islam were killed by fellow Muslims,

capital to Baghdad and massacring all the Umayya they could find. But the

Mu’tazilite

“There is no god but God, Muhammad is God’s Messenger, and Ali is God’s Executor (wali).”

ideals of the Enlightenment, which the British

longer be separated from the repressive imperialist

In 1802, on the holy day of Ashura, they scaled the walls of Karbala and massacred two thousand Shi‘ite worshippers as they celebrated the rituals of Muharram.

After publicly executing forty thousand men and reimposing Wahhabism over the entire population, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud renamed the Arabian Peninsula “the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” The primitive tribe of the Najd and their puritanical allies had become the Wardens of the Sanctuary, the Keepers of the Keys.

antithesis to secular nationalism and believed

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amateur intellectuals alike, leading a prominent